Meme: February 20: wolves in the piano, wolves underneath the stairs

[dira]

February 20: kass asked me to write about wolves.

The thing about wolves, essentially, is that they are simultaneously soft and cuddly and dangerous killing machines. That is the id-appeal of them to me. Psychic wolves and wolf-shaped werewolves more so than actual wolves, of course.

I first got acquainted with psychic wolves when I read A Companion to Wolves shortly after it came out, and on the first reading especially, I felt very much like the target audience for the book in a way that I didn't feel like the target audience for most fantasy or science fiction I read: it was queer feminist hurt/comfort that put a woobie boy front and center for me to love. In the course of time I read the second book and got rather less enchanted, but by then I had already begun on the long road to writing psychic wolves into Generation Kill, so they were in a way mine now, and disliking a book about them could not make me stop loving psychic wolves.

Adding wolves to GK was a way to do a bunch of fun things in that universe: I could have a world where DADT was not a big thing, and homosexual activity was an inherent part of military service, and still build a situation where there was a reason Nate and Brad really, really couldn't have a relationship while serving together. It also allowed me to make literal and external the "warrior spirit" that Brad talks about in the miniseries (totally unironically, oh Brad, ♥) and generally up the stakes in a bunch of situations--Trombley isn't just a weirdo, he's a flashpoint for the whole unit.

Also, so many wolf-cuddles. ♥_______♥ Heat-shack sex was really just a hurt/comfort-y bonus.

I am likewise super into the actual-wolf-form of werewolves because a) so much more aesthetically pleasing than the Teen Wolf ~beta shift~ with the sideburns and whatnot, and b) did I mention wolves can be cuddly. The Boy and the Beast was basically just a 117,000-word ode to how great it would be to cuddle with a wolf, because, did I mention, cuddles are relevant to my interests. As are wolves. :D

Comments

[kass]

Wooooooolves! ♥

I had pretty much exactly the same reaction to A Companion to Wolves as you did -- queer feminist h/c with a fabulous woobie in the middle of it; what's not to love? This is apparently a trope which works reeeeeally well for me. With the h/c and the cuddles and the occasional dubcon and the psychic bonds and so on. Om nom nom. I eat this stuff up with a spoon.

And of course now there are wolves in my GK head-canon, and I have to remind myself that next time I rewatch the miniseries it won't have wolves in it. (More's the pity. :-)

[dira]

I remember looking up from ACTW halfway through and saying to whoever was in the room with me, "I have never felt this much like the target audience for a book." ♥

And, heeee, yay GK wolves! :D

[riverlight]

My only comment on this post, besides "Yay wolves" and "Yay GK+wolves" is "hey, I know that song lyric"! *g*

[dira]

I think of you every time I use a Josh Ritter lyric for anything! ♥

[riverlight]

Aw, yay!

[everbright]

Yeah, the second book was pretty transparently scrambling to set up a larger world so they had something to stick a plot around later, ALSO, they did not clear up woobie-boy at all, apparently he's just going to continue to be traumatized forever. I was pretty excited about the Not!Romans though.

EVIL IMPERIAL ROMANS, YES. I hope they all get slaughtered. :D

[dira]

I was just frustrated by the degree to which it was written like fanfic but not the OT3 I wanted.

[everbright]

YES THAT TOO. The let-down of inexplicable OT3 block was really annoying. I decided to out it out of my mind by the time is was clear they weren't going to spend much time together in the book, but that narrative structure did not go where I was thinking it was going to go.